Tonight, USGAA, the area in charge of Gaelic games in America outside of New York, will field a team of US-born players in the All-Ireland JFC semi-final against London in Abbotstown. Win there and they will play the final in Croke Park in Sunday’s curtain-raiser before the Donegal-Galway clash.
From an initial 160-strong list, 28 players from 13 clubs, five cities and three time zones have been pulled together for the weekend.
“When you say it’s a county team it’s pretty much a continental team,” John Young, chairperson of the USGAA county team steering committee, explains.
“There’s a party of pretty much 40 people every time we make a move somewhere or have an event, be that training or a game. Anything we need to do and get together about 40 people move between players, management, county board officials, steering committee and whatever else we need. So logistically, it is a mad challenge.”
To make the logistics work, a huge financial outlay is required. The final panel pulls from Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit and San Francisco, all of whom need flights and accommodation and meals to attend the training camps and games that make up their preparations.
They’ve had gatherings in Florida and played challenge games against the likes of Queen’s University.
They arrived in UL last Monday and played Monaleen during the week. Young estimates they will have spent some $270,000 (€248,000) after this weekend. A huge outlay but one the membership of USGAA have rallied around.
“So when this trip ends, we have it budgeted it out, approximately $270,000.
“But our membership got behind us. We did a big draw and we actually way exceeded what we [thought] we would generate income-wise from that because people wanted to get behind us.
“The membership in the US is ready for this as well as the players, and the evidence for that is how they support you. When we sent out the information they drove hard for us to generate the income.
“Our own county board and Croke Park supported us, Munster Council supported us and the jersey sponsorship generated income as well.”
Young explains that technology was crucial to pull the team together. They all followed the same programme, logging times and running schedules under the watchful eye of selectors in each city.
Each ‘event’, be it a training weekend or a game, was precious and expensive, coming in at a cost of around $30,000 (€27,500) each.
They also leaned on the expertise of former Kerry All-Ireland-winning manager Pat O’Shea, through their link up with Munster GAA.
Young explains their ambitions for this weekend are simple.
Manager Aidan Corr (Antrim) and selectors Martin Kerr (Tyrone), Ollie McIlhone (Derry), James Staunton (Mayo) and trainer Louis Bradley (Donegal) are hopeful their side can overcome the logistical challenges and earn a historic win. But they also want to leave the foundations in place so the USGAA county team become a fixture.
“I think the player pathway circle is complete now which is what Croke Park development preaches.
“There’s a pathway in place now by being able to go all the way from youth to county player.
“There is great support in USGAA for this. People are planning ‘watch parties’, taking off work, it’s streamed on TG4.
“Long term it is to have this become engrained in our society over there in the US, that we have a county team. And it becomes a habit that we do it every year and it becomes natural to the point where we don’t believe we didn’t have this before.”
